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Good Podcasts

Yesterday I had an interesting conversation with a friend about ways to improve your knowledge in different topics.

I suggested to him to leverage his long commute or runs to listen to audio books and podcasts. I have been doing it over the last 15 years and it’s a great way for me to utilize time better. Suddenly the long runs become interesting and time flies. So his next question was what are the podcasts I like and why.

Here are the top ones:

Revisionist History is my favorite one. Gladwell does what he is excelling at… telling a story you think you knew but turn it on its head and during this process teach you a thing or two. In the last two seasons, Gladwell went back and reinterpret something from the past: an event, a person, an idea. Something overlooked. Something misunderstood. The one on Martin Luther King is fascinating.

Freakonomics is an award-winning podcast with a lot of listeners (which most, I suspect, like logic, economic etc’). Stephen Dubner has conversations that explore the riddles of everyday life and the weird wrinkles of human nature — from cheating and crime to parenting and sports. Dubner talks with Nobel laureates and provocateurs, social scientists and entrepreneurs — and his Freakonomics co-author Steve Levitt. The last few episodes (as of March 2018) about CEOs are really good. Check it out.

Here’s the thing with Alec Baldwin – Alec really knows how to interview his impressive guests and listen to their ideas and stories. It’s great to follow him and learn about people that changed history, industries or ‘just’ put a smile on our faces.

Epicenter – I’ve been passion about the crypto world since 2012. Around early 2014 I found this one. It’s a podcast that takes you to the heart of this important technological revolution: the rise of decentralized technologies. Every week, they bring conversations with some of the brightest minds in this bourgeoning ecosystem of startups and open source projects. Good stuff if you want to learn more about decentralized technologies and the crypto world.
Btw, Block Zero is a new podcast that deal with this topic as well. It’s still young but sounds good so far.

The Moth – The Moth Podcast features stories that are being recorded live on stage around the USA.
Some of them are really good! Episodes are released every Tuesday.

If you are an entrepreneur or developer that like to hear about startups, I would go with Trailblazers, DFJ ETL, A16Z and Master of scales.

In Trailblazers, Walter Isaacson (former CNN chairman and CEO) is your guide through the narratives and nuances. Some really good stories about history and entrepreneurship in an era that the word wasn’t part of the language.

At DFJ ETL, you get a spot at Stanford auditorium, without the problems of the parking.
Some of the speakers are very interesting but that audio (for the Q&A section) is not the best in most of the recordings.

TED Radio hour is an option to get a ‘executive summary’ of TED talks in specific topic.

Btw, the podcasts apps I’m using are: Stitcher, player.fm (only for Android) and on the iPhone Overcast is great.